The United States is bracing for the outcome of two high-profile trials featuring a volatile mix of guns, self-defense claims, and racial tensions. One of the cases is being tried in the town of Brunswick in Georgia, a southern state with a segregationist past.

Three white men are on trial for shooting and killing Ahmaud Arbery, a Black jogger, on February 23, 2020 after chasing him through their neighborhood in pickup trucks. Gregory McMichael, his son Travis and their neighbor William Bryan say they were attempting to make a “citizen’s arrest” of a man they suspected of being a burglar.

Arbery’s family and supporters have called it a modern-day lynching. The other case is taking place 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away, in the Wisconsin town of Kenosha. The town near the Great Lakes was rocked in August 2020 by protests and rioting after police shot and severely wounded a Black man.

During a third night of unrest, Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, joined groups of other armed men to patrol the streets and protect, as they put it, businesses from arsonists and looters. Rittenhouse ended up shooting two men dead and wounding another.

Charged with homicide, the young man is claiming self-defense. While the details of the cases differ, both involve what has become an “American norm” of “civilians toting around firearms to protect their neighborhoods,” said Caroline Light, a professor at Harvard University who has written a book called “Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair With Lethal Self-Defense.” READ MORE